{"id":454,"date":"2005-06-16T02:14:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-16T02:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=454"},"modified":"2005-06-16T02:14:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-16T02:14:00","slug":"454","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=454","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s wrong with this picture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will be going to a Pagan festival this weekend, but sometimes I wonder about my fellow nature-religionists.<\/p>\n

The site is a campground at more than 8,000 feet elevation; the date is the weekend before the solstice with a forecast of mostly sunny weather.<\/p>\n

And then the organizers announce “at the Sun’s zenith . . .an adult-only sky-clad optional drawing down of the Sun.”<\/p>\n

My contribution to the ritual will be a partially full box of tubes of ex-Deutsche Bundeswehr Sonnenschutzcreme<\/em>. If it’s good enough for Hans und Fritz, maybe it will save you all from looking like the sunburn scene in A River Runs Through It<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A friend in California today was telling me of recent rituals in the Berkeley and Sacramento areas, with authentically (?) costumed Druids red-faced and on the verge of heatstroke thanks to their wool garments.<\/p>\n

People, people, people, if you are going to practice nature religion<\/a>, you have to adapt to where you are in actuality, not where you are in your fantasies.<\/p>\n

It was not Pagans, however, who organized this weekend’s Ca\u00f1on City, Colo., “Gaelic Festival,”<\/a> although some Pagans whom I know plan to attend.<\/p>\n

I lived in Ca\u00f1on City for six years. It’s an outlier of the Chihuahuan Desert. The summers are blistering. And I expect that people will be affecting Scots dress with lots and lots of wool. Maybe the smart ones will stay indoors, drinking in air-conditioned bars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s wrong with this picture? I will be going to a Pagan festival this weekend, but sometimes I wonder about my fellow nature-religionists. The site is a campground at more than 8,000 feet elevation; the date is the weekend before the solstice with a forecast of mostly sunny weather. And then the organizers announce “at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-454","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":869,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=869","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":0},"title":"What I Will Be Doing for Beltane","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, \"will be doing.\" Some people look at the calendar and say that Beltane is this evening and tomorrow. Others celebrated last weekend, according to the \"weekend nearest the cross-quarter day\" rule. Only by that rule, it comes next weekend.By the Sun, it falls on Saturday the 5th, as this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":206,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=206","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":1},"title":"Current Reading I will be\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Current Reading I will be leaving tomorrow for a long festival weekend; paradoxically, I hope to get some reading done, toward the paper that I'm writing for the Bath Spa UC \"Exploring Consciousness\" conference. So it will be a weekend in the woods with some of the old-timers: Jeffrey Burton\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13997,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13997","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":2},"title":"Have a Happy All-These-Things Festival Weekend!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"(image by Grok 3, which was having trouble with \"Feliz\" and \"Cinco\")","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=100","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":3},"title":"Haifa Wehbe Watch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever since my original post about Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe (or Wahbi), this blog has been receiving sporadic hits from the Middle East: Israel, Syria, Egypt, Dubai . . . Apparently she and some of her peers have really undermined traditional Arab ideas of beauty. But I say this to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":624,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=624","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":4},"title":"Goths once sacked RomeAnd Oleg\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Goths once sacked RomeAnd Oleg Volk is wondering what that would look like now.Ah, \"Goth,\" one of few words that is almost as ambiguous as \"liberal\" or \"conservative.\" I mean, could you read this and then describe what is a \"conservative\"?More serious blogging coming this weekend, I promise.Tag: Goth","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6627,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6627","url_meta":{"origin":454,"position":5},"title":"By Lugh, I Think They’ve Got It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper in a coffee house on Sunday morning, I turned to the weather\/almanac page and learned something new. The coming weekend marks the ancient Celtic [sic] solar festival of Llamas. That was a divinely inspired typo. Given the prevalence of the subspecies dramaticus in the Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6627#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"llamas","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/llamas.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}